Father Demetrius A. Gallitzin: Son of the Russian Enlightenment

Father Demetrius A. Gallitzin: Son of the Russian Enlightenment Daniel L. Schlafly Jr. The Catholic Historical Review, Volume 83, Number 4, October 1997, pp. 716-725 (Article) Published by The Catholic University of America Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cat.1997.0237 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/443328/summary Access provided at 8 Jan 2020 19:11 GMT from Reading University (+1 other institution account) FATHER DEMETRIUS A. GALIJTZIN: SON OF THE RUSSIAN ENLIGHTENMENT Daniel L. SchlaflyJr.* Father Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin (Dmitrii Dmitrievich Golitsyn) (1770-1840) cut a striking figure in early American Catholic history. He was born into one of Russia's most prominent families on December 22, 1770, in The Hague, where his father, Prince Dmitrii Alekseevich Golitsyn, was serving as Russian minister to The Netherlands. There, as in his previous diplomatic post in Paris, the senior Golitsyn avidly pursued the broad intellectual interests that earned him a distinguished reputation in the Russian and European Enlightenment.1 His mother, Amalia von Schmettau, was the daughter of a Prussian field marshal. She, too, was devoted to culture and learning and, after separating from her husband in 1774, continued her own studies and carefully supervised the education of young Mitri and his sister Marianne in a Rousseauvian spirit which sought to develop the heart and the body as well as the mind. In 1786 she returned to the CathoUc Church into which she had been baptized, led both her children to the faith in 1787, and went on to play a leading role in German pre-Romantic CathoUc circles.2 *Mr. Schlafly is an associate professor of history in Saint Louis University. 1A friend of Voltaire, Diderot, and Helvétius, Golitsyn published studies on geography, mineralogy, electricity, politics, and other subjects. See Nina I. Bashkina et al. (eds.), The United States and Russia.The Beginning of Relations, 1765-1815 (Washington, D.C, 1980), for the text of a letter he wrote in 1 777 to Benjamin Franklin discussing theories of lightning and electricity, pp. 41-43. Golitsyn so admired Franklin that he corresponded with the American although it was inappropriate for a Russian diplomat to have contact with the as yet unrecognized representative of the rebellious American colonies. N. N. Bolkhovitinov, Rossiia otkryvaet Ameriku, 1 732-1799 (Moscow, 1991), p. 32. For Golitsyn's life, see G. K.Tsverava, DmitriiAlekseevich Golitsyn: 1 734-1803 (Leningrad, 1985). Also see N. N. Bolkhovitinov, The Beginnings of Russian-American Relations, 1775-1815, trans. Elena Levin (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975), pp. 16-17 aadpassim, in addition to his Rossiia otkryvaet Ameriku. Unfortunately, Golitsyn's personal papers, preserved in Braunschweig, Germany, where he died in 1803, which undoubtedly contained material on his son's life, were destroyed in World War II. The little that Tsverava and Bolkhovitinov have on Demetrius is taken from sources already used by Gallitzin s earlier biographers. 2On her life and career, see, in addition to Tsverava, Pierre Brachin. Le Cercle de Mün- 716 BY DANIEL L. SCHLAFLY1JR.717 Mitri arrived in Baltimore in 1792 for what was to be a stop on a grand tour of the United States and the West Indies but instead presented himself to Bishop John Carroll as a candidate for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1795 after studies at the new St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, the first priest to receive aU of his minor and major orders in the United States. Named pastor of a tiny settlement in the wilds of western Pennsylvania in 1799, GaUitzin worked tirelessly and effec- tively there until his death on May 6, 1840. He founded a flourishing Catholic community, still bearing the name of Loretto which GaUitzin gave it, spending over $ 1 50,000 of his own, his family's, and his friends' money to realize his dream, going deeply into debt in the process. He eagerly embraced his adopted country, becoming an American citizen in 1802, even raising and training a militia company in the War of 1812, although this indirectly aided the Napoleon he loathed for invading Russia.3 GaUitzin also was an early and eloquent apologist for Catholicism, publishing a number of tracts responding to Protestant charges of Roman errors, immorality, and anti-Americanism. His A Defence of Catholic Principles, for example, which was published in 1816, enjoyed great success both in Europe and America for its erudition and tolerant tone, as well as for the author's appreciation of the political liberty and religious freedom of his adopted land.4 ster (1779-1806) et la pensée religieuse de F. L. Stolberg (Lyon, 1952), and Ewald Reinhard, Die Münsterische "famila sacra": Der Kreis um die Fürstin Gallitzin: Fürstenberg, Overberg und ihre Freunde (Münster, 1953). Also see Mathilde Kohler, Amalie von Gallitzin: ein Leben zwischen Skandal und Legende (Paderborn, 1993), and Siegfried Sudhof (ed.), Der Kreis von Münster: Briefe undAufzeichnungen Fürstenbergs, der Fürstin Gallitzin und ihrer Freunde (Münster, 1962). 'Albert Parry,"Prince Golitsyn: Apostle of the Küeghenies" Russian Review, TV (Spring, 1945), 31 . In a letter to Bishop Carroll written July 4, 1814, Gallitzin called Napoleon's defeat "so great a blessing" and sang a solemn Mass for the occasion. Parts of the letter are reprinted in The United States and Russia, pp. 1084-1085. American public opinion was sharply divided, however, during the War of 1812, with some expressions of hostility to Napoleon and sympathy for Russia. See Bolkhovitinov, Beginnings, pp. 434-448. "The best biography of Gallitzin is the account by Gallitzin's faithful disciple and coworker in his last years, the Reverend Peter Henry Lemcke, Life and Work of Prince DemetriusAugustine Gallitzin (New York, 1941), which includes additional material and careful notes by Lemcke's translator, the Reverend Joseph Plumpe. A good popular account is Daniel Sargent, Mitri: or the Story of Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin (New York, 1945). Also see Parry, op. cit. , pp. 18-37; Lawrence Flick, "Gallitzin,'' Catholic Historical Review, XIII (October, 1927), 394-469; and various short pieces and docu- mentary material, Vols. XII, XIV, XVII-XX, XXII-XXTV XXVI, and XXVIII of the American Catholic Historical Researches. Also see Mary Wendelin Geibel, "Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, Prince, Priest, and Pioneer'' (Unpublished master's thesis, St. Bonaventure University, 1956). Two older biographies which include a number of excerpts from primary sources are Sarah Brownson, Life of Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin (New York, 1873), 718FATHER DEMETRIUS A. GALUTZIN: SON OF THE RUSSIAN ENUGHTENMENT It is no wonder, then, that GaUitzin has fascinated biographers. His missionary achievements, pastoral zeal, apologetic skiUs, and, not least, his personal piety and asceticism would have been more than enough to ensure his prominence, aside from his exotic heritage and unusual previous life. Then there was the appeal of a man who gave up wealth and privilege for a life of hardship and privation, "the prince who gave his gold away" as a twentieth-century children's biography labels him.5 And at a time when Irish and other Catholic immigrants were attacked as wild, ignorant, and un-American, Gallitzin was an obvious model of one who was law-abiding, educated, and patriotic. Thus John O'Kane Murray included a profile of Gallitzin in his catalogue of such New World Catholic heroes as Columbus, Champlain, Rose of Lima, and John Barry.6 Recently Gallitzin has even been claimed by LithuanianAmericans, since the Russian Golitsyns were descended from the medieval grand dukes of Lithuania.7 GalUtzin's contemporaries and biographers were fascinated by the notion of the "Russian prince," a term inevitably used when GalUtzin's name came up; in 1840 Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick composed an epitaph for his tomb which began "Dem[etrius] Augustinus] E[x] Principibus GaUitzin (Demetrius Augustine of the Princes GaUitzin)."8 Fascination, and Thomas Heyden,/! Memoir on the Life and Character of the Rev. Prince Demetrius A. de Gallitzin (Baltimore, 1869), the latter by another co-worker of Gallitzin. A recent popular biography which emphasizes the Lithuanian origins of the Golitsyn family is Stasys Mazilauskas, Pioneer Prince in USA (Troy, Michigan, 1982). Good summary accounts are the profiles by Richard J. Purcell in the Dictionary of American Biography, VLT, 113-115, Ferdinand Kittell in The Catholic Encyclopedia, VI, 367-369, and Daniel L. Schlaflyjr., in the Modern Encyclopedia ofRussian and Soviet History,Xn,71-74.Thete is a short entry on him in the Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar' F. A. Brokgauza i I. A. Efrona, XVIII, 52. The volume of the Russkii biograficheskii Slovar' that might well have included a comprehensive article on Gallitzin never appeared, since publication of the RBS was halted midstream by the 1917 revolutions. For a collection of Gallitzin's writings, see Grace Murphy (ed.), Gallitzin 's Letters:A Collection ofthe Polemical Works ofthe Very Reverend Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin (1770-1840) (Loretto, Pennsylvania, 1940). 'Sister Mary Fidelis Glass, The Prince Who Gave His Gold Away:A Story of the Russian Prince Demetrius Gallitzin Toldfor Boys and Girls (St. Louis, 1938). "'Demetrius A. Gallitzin," in John O'Kane Murray, Lives of the Catholic Heroes and Heroines ofAmerica (New York, 1886), pp. 765-782. 7In 1964 the chargé d'affaires of the Lithuanian government-in-exile helped plant a tree in Gallitzin's memory in Prince Gallitzin State Park in Pennsylvania, praising him as "the first man to bring the Lithuanian national emblem to the United States." Mazilauskas, op. cit., pp. 153-154. His Lithuanian ancestry earned him an article in the Enclopedica Lituanica (6 vols.; Boston, 1970-1978), VI, 412-413. The full text is in Heyden, op. cit. , p. 1 57. The Russian title the Golitsyns bore, kniaz', usually translated as prince, was used by a number of noble families, and does not imply, as in western Europe, a member of the ruling house. BYDANIELL.SCHLAFLYJR.719 however, did not mean real knowledge. Since until weU into the nineteenth century few Russians or Americans visited or wrote about each other's countries.'"For most of them [Americans in the 1790's] it [Russia] was an exotic faraway place with strange customs."10 GalUtzin's associates were no exception. Despite his financial troubles, some of his backwoods parishioners beUeved that "aU the treasures of the Russian empire could be commandeered for the purpose of changing the AUeghenies into a paradise."" And even such an inteUigent biographer as Heyden reprints as true a fantastic claim that "the Emperor is the Patriarch, or Head of the Greek Russian Church" and "can, if he pleases, celebrate mass." " But if his new countrymen had Uttle concept of Russia, what about GaUitzin himseU7? Born in The Hague, after the age of four he rarely saw his Russian father, who left his upbringing completely to his Prussian mother. In a November 1 1 , 1806, letter to Bishop Carroll, GaUitzin caUed CarroU "a father to me, and more than my real father, according to the flesh. "3 He never went to Russia and by an 1807 edict of the Governing Senate lost his right to his father's estates by becoming a CathoUc and a priest.14 Father Lemcke, who was Gallitzin's constant companion for the 9In a letter Andrei IA. Dashkov, the first Russian diplomat accredited to the United States, wrote on December 8, 1809, to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Nikolai R Rumiantsev, to help Gallitzin get promised sums from Europe, he said Gallitzin "is the only person I know of Russian noble extraction who has settled in the United States." The United States and Russia, p. 625. See Bolkhovitinov, Beginnings, for a discussion of travelers and scientific and cultural ties between the United States and Russia. He includes a brief account of Gallitzin, p. 76. '"Norman E. Saul, Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867 (Lawrence, Kansas, 1991), p. 33. "Lemcke, op. cit., p. 162. "Quoted in Heyden, op. cit. , p. 188. "Quoted ibid., p. 108. 14D. A. Golitsyns property went to his wife when he died in 1 803 , who in turn left her inheritance in equal shares to Gallitzin and his sister, Marianne. When a decree of the Russian Senate, issued a year after his mother's death in 1806, excluded him, Marianne promised to give her brother his share of the whole which had gone to her. Although first his mother and then his sister did send occasional sums over the years, these were insignificant compared with the expenses he incurred in his mission and only a fraction of what he would have received from his parents. Heyden claims Gallitzin's father left 70,000 rubles plus three villages in Vladimir and Kostroma Provinces with 1,260 male serfs (op. cit. , ?. 50). According to Lemcke, there were two estates near Kaluga with 1 ,269 male serfs with a yearly income of 12,900 rubles (op. cit., p. 163). All of Gallitzin's biographers discuss his tangled financial affairs. For his own summary of them, see his letters to James N.Causten of October 12 and November 8, 1836, quoted iaAmerican Catholic Historical Researches, LX (July, 1892), 98- 101 . 720FATHER DEMETRIUS A. GALLITZIN: SON OF THE RUSSIAN ENLIGHTENMENT last six years of the missionary's life, remarked on "his complete ignorance of the laws and language of Russia."15 In addition, he defied his father and rejected what could have been a distinguished career in his nominal homeland by ignoring a 1794 order to report for duty in the Izmailovskii Guards Regiment, in which his father had enroUed him in infancy.16 For many years after coming to the United States he went by the name of Augustine Schmet or Smith, from his Catholic confirmation name and his mother's maiden name of Schmettau, although it was at his parents' request that he avoided using Golitsyn.17 As noted earlier, Gallitzin quickly mastered English and easüy adapted to American mores and values. He was quick to take offense at any impUcation that he was anything but a patriotic American.18 Yet a tie remained. His title was still recognized in Russia,19 and in 1809 he successfully petitioned the Pennsylvania Legislature to resume the name Gallitzin instead of Smith.20 One obvious reason for continu- ing to look to Russia was his hopes of receiving what he considered his just share of his inheritance. Although in a letter to Gallitzin's mother written January 12, 1795, his father claimed Mitri knew he forfeited any rights by becoming a priest,21 Father Demetrius continued to assert his "Lemcke, op. cit., p. 137. "Lemcke reprints the text of the order and accompanying letter from Gallitzin's father he wrote on January 20, 1794, to his mother, who then relayed the news to her son (op. cit., pp. 75-77). It was common practice for Russian nobles to enroll their sons as young as possible in elite units, of which the Izmailovskii was one, so they could earn seniority without actual service. Lemcke s account of Catherine II personally giving young Mitri his ensign's commission in 1774 cannot be true, however, even though Lemcke heard it from Gallitzin, since Catherine was not in western Europe then (op. cit. , p. 32). 1 As stated in Gallitzin's December 5, 1809, petition to the Pennsylvania Legislature for legal recognition as Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin. Quoted in Flick, op. cit. , p. 43 1 . '"Thus when in 1808 a Republican lawyer claimed that Gallitzin's Federalist sympathies reflected a preference for aristocratic and monarchist principles, Gallitzin's re- sponse stressed the "duty which I owe as well to my adopted Country as to the Religion which I profess to avoid any suspicion of disloyalty." Letter to the editor of the Lancaster Federal Gazette, September 20, 1808. Quoted in Murphy, op. cit. , p. 298. "He is listed in R V. Dolgorukov, Russkaia rodoslovnaia kniga (4 vols.; St. Petersburg, 1854-1857), I, 297. Dolgorukov mistakenly lists Gallitzin's place of death as Baltimore rather than Loretto. "Gallitzin's letter and the legislature's approval are reprinted in Flick, op. cit., pp. 430-433. 21Quoted in Lemcke, op. cit. , pp. 84-86. His father repeated this in a letter to Mitri written in June, 1799 (quoted in Lemcke, op. cit. , p. 1 22). Gallitzin's father mistakenly assumed his son was entering a monastery, which would have entailed a vow of poverty and renunciation of any property. Since I have not seen the text of the 1807 Senate decree disinheriting GaUitzin, I cannot say if it was based on this assumption or on his becoming a BY DANIEL L. SCHLAFLY,JR.721 status as a GoUtsyn in his long campaign to press his claims. In a February 5, 1801, letter to Bishop Carroll he mentions writing his father "to undeceive him from his expectations that I had renounced aU claims to the succession of his temporal estate."22 And an 1827 appeal caUing "upon the Charity of his fellow Christians" to help pay his debts began "Demetrius A. GaUitzin, son of Prince Demetrius of GaUitzin."23 In his case a Russian noble title impUed more than status or inheritance. GaUitzin's father was one of many who by Catherine the Great's time were totaUy at home in the world of Western culture and leaning, and sometimes open to Western political ideas as well.24 M. I. Bagrianskii, for example, studied at Moscow University, earned a doctorate at Leiden, did further study in Paris, and attended lectures in Berlin before returning to Russia in 1 790.25 Voltaire and Rousseau were so impressed Catholic priest. At least until the reign of Nicholas I being a Catholic or even converting to Catholicism from Orthodoxy did not bring legal sanctions, although often there was family and social disapproval. See Daniel L. Schlafly, Jr., "De Joseph de Maistre à la Bibliothèque rose.' Le catholicisme chez les Rostopcin," Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, XI (January-March, 1970), 93-109. "Quoted in Sargent, op. cit. , p. 1 34. "Quoted ibid., pp. 225-226. Gallitzin enlisted the help of at least three Russian diplomats in this effort. The first was Dashkov, who served as consul general in Philadelphia from 1808 to 1811, then as minister in Washington from 1811 to 1819. See above, note 9. Baron Jacob Tuyll van Serooskerken, who served in the United States as chargé d'affaires in 1817 and from 1822 to 1826,helped Gallitzin draw up an appeal to Emperor Alexander I in 1825, which, unfortunately, remained unanswered. An English translation is in "Father Gallitzin's 'Historical Sketch of Some Events' in his Life"American Catholic Historical Re- searches, LX (July, 1892), 101-105. Baron Franz Freiherr von Maltitz, Russia's chargé d'af- faires in America in 1826, gave him a large silver medal depicting Emperor Alexander I, which Gallitzin later was ready to sell in his financial distress (ibid., p. 105). Heyden claims Maltitz lent Gallitzin five thousand dollars, but a year later magnanimously canceled the debt by lighting his cigar with Gallitzin's note at a dinner party which included Henry Clay among the guests (op. cit., pp. 102-103). Another Russian diplomat, Pavel R Svin'in, who served as translator in the Russian legation at Philadelphia from 1809 to 1811, then as secretary of the Russian consulate general in the same city from 1811 to 1813, was, however, less sympathetic. In an article published in Russia in 18l4,he criticized Gallitzin, whom he identified as "K. G." (Kniaz' or Prince Golitsyn), as someone "born and raised in a foreign land, in a foreign religion, according to foreign rules." Quoted in A. N. Nikoliukin, Literaturnynyie sviazi Rossii i SShA (Moscow, 1981), p. 142. While the accusation has some validity, Gallitzin was baptized Orthodox, although his knowledge and practice of Orthodoxy were minimal. "For discussions of this transformation of the Russian aristocracy in the eighteenth century, see, among many treatments, Isabel de Madanagz, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven, 1981); Erich Donnert, Russland im Zeitalter derAufklärung (Vi- enna, 1984); and Hans Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge, Massachusetts, I960). ""Pokazaniia doktora Bagrianskogo," in A. N. Popov, "Novyie dokumenty po delu 722FATHER DEMETRIUS A. GAIXITZIN: SON OF THE RUSSIAN ENUGHTENMENT when they met the Russian playwright Denis Fonvizin at a rendezvous de la République des lettres et des arts that they wanted to make him a corresponding member.26 Thus GalUtzin's father approved sending his son on a grand tour, "in the interest of his education," as he put it in 1794.27 On January 28, 1794, he wrote his son to praise his "exceUent observations" during his travels.28 But how could GaUitzin's conversion to Catholicism and his choice of a clerical career be compatible with the Russian Enlightenment, which shared the hostUity Western European inteUectuaI circles felt toward organized religion? Frederick the Great once said of Catherine that "she has no religion, but she feigns piety,"29 and a leading historian of the Russian Church described the attitude of the Russian nobility toward the Orthodox clergy in Catherine's time as "contemptuous. "30 This certainly was true of GaUitzin's father, and of his mother untU her own return to the CathoUc Church. Thus, although Mitri was baptized Russian Orthodox, he had no contact with reUgion in his youth. "None of us [his family] ever went to any place of pubUc worship," he wrote in a tract pubUshed in 1836, noting,"I was raised in the principles of InfideUty, and felt for Revelation, Christianity, and its Ministers, the most sovereign contempt."31 No wonder, then, that his father wrote to his mother on January 12, 1795,"He [Mitri] wiU never get my consent or approbation to enter the clerical estate," caUing him "an enthusiast who . . . abuses the precepts of the gospels."32 A letter Mitri received the foUowing year from Father Bernhard Overberg, his mother's spiritual advisor, said, "We were aU in the greatest anxiety lest a great tempest arise when your father should receive the news that his son had become a priest in America." Although "his anger was somewhat moderated" after his wife and her friends pleaded with him, "the idea, Novikova," Sbornik russkago istoricheskogo obshchestva, II (1868), 130-133. 26D. I. Fonvizin, Sobrante sochinenii (2 vols.; Moscow, 1959), II, 448-449. 27In a letter to Gallitzin's mother, January 20, 1794. Quoted in Lemcke, op. cit., p. 76. 2SQuoted*irf.,p.70. 29"Elle n'a aucune religion, mais elle contrefait la dévote." Quoted in A. V Kartashev, Ocherkipo istorii russkoi tserkvi (2 vols.; Paris, 1959), II, 452. '"Igor Smolitsch, Geschichte der russischen Kirche, 1 700- 191 7 (Leiden, 1964), p. 244. "The state did not expect nobles to become priests. . . . The nobility also regarded the clergy as an inferior social status." Gregory Freeze, The Russian Levites.The Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1977), p. 186. ""The Bible: Truth and Charity," in Murphy, op. cit., p. 272. "Quoted in Lemcke, op. cit., p. 85. BY DANIEL L SCHLAFLYJR.723 however, remained odious to him because he regarded it as the grave which doomed forever the splendor of his famüy"33 It is not surprising, then, that GalUtzin's apologetic writings show a firmer grasp, not just of CathoUcism, but also of Protestantism, than of Orthodoxy. He claims mistakenly, for example, that like CathoUcs, Orthodox beUeve in purgatory,34 refers to the "Greek Protestant church,"35 and cites no Eastern Christian source past the age of the Church Fathers in any of his writings. At first glance GaUitzin seems to have repudiated the Enlightenment entirely in his fervent espousal of CathoUcism. "Our age, dear sir," he wrote in his 1816 tracts Defence of Catholic Principles "is the age of incredulity commonly caUed the age of philosophy"36 Some years later in The Bible: Truth and Charity, published in 1836, he condemned "the famous propaganda of Infidelity established at Paris for the purpose of destroying Christianity . . . whose motto was . . . Ecrasez l'infâme. . . . Among those Missionaries of InfideUty was the celebrated Diderot . . . [who displayed] a furious hatred against both Christianity and Monarchy"37 Other Europeans of GalUtzin's generation embraced Catholicism after being raised in the skepticism of the Enlightenment,38 a number of whom, like him, came from the Russian nobUity. These Russian converts, too, had read widely in the serious writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; Aleksandra GoUtsyna, for example, mentions Rousseau, Bacon, Pope, and Blackstone,39 while Sophie Swetchine (Sonia Svechina), who later was prominent in Catholic circles in Paris, lists Voltaire, Rousseau, and Gibbon among others.40 Like GaUitzin, they, "Part of the letter is given in Lemcke, op. cit. , pp. 87-9 1 . Overberg goes on to describe the elder Golitsyns change of heart after he was snubbed in 1796 by the new emperor, Paul I. "Mitri, before dubbed stupid and simple-minded, was now commended as wise and fortunate because by his choice he saved himself from the servility of court life." Ibid. , p. 91. MIn "A Defence of Catholic Principles," quoted in Murphy, op. cit. , p. 67. "In "Six Letters of Advice to the Gentlemen Presbyterian Parsons," in Murphy, op. cit. , p. 228. "Murphy, op. cit. , p. 104. i7Ibid., p. 27 \. 38See Fernand Baldensperger, Le mouvement des idées dans l'émigration française, 1789-1815 (2 vols.; Paris, 1924), especially 1, 182-225. "Bibliothèque Slave, Collection Gagarine,Boïte XII. 40M.-J. Rouët de Journel, Une Russe Catholique:Madame Swetchine (Paris, 1929),passim. 724FATHER DEMETRIUS A. GAIXITZIN: SON OF THE RUSSIAN ENLIGHTENMENT too, later ridiculed the Enlightenment they once had endorsed. "The supposed lumières de la raison are totally devoid of proof," commented Ekaterina Rostopchina,41 whUe another Russian Catholic convert, Varvara Golovina, expressed her dismay at the influence of the "new philosophy" during Catherine the Great's reign.42 But in attacking the EnUghtenment from their perspective as devout CathoUcs, GaUitzin and other Russian converts used the same rational and scientific methodology as their more secular contemporaries, and Father Demetrius's long career bore the stamp of his early inteUectuaI formation. "Talent was evident," Bishop CarroU wrote to Father Francis Nagot, S.S., the rector of St. Mary's Seminary, when recommending Mitri to him in 1792.43 Too, whUe it was not surprising that his apologetics showed a firm grasp of scripture, CathoUc theology, and church history, his inteUectuaI horizons were not limited to these. His A Defence of Catholic Principles, for example, opens by noting that "by the help of natural phUosophy physics, anatomy, astronomy, and other sciences, many of the beauties and perfections of nature have been discovered."44 GaUitzin goes on to cite Voltaire, Dryden, Locke, and Grotius; discusses Leibnitz, VirgU, and Plato; and refers confidently to Luther, Melanchthon, ZwingU, Arminius, Foxe, Calvin, and Cranmer, as weU as contemporary Protestant authors, in the course of a comprehensive and systematic presentation.45 In the middle of the Pennsylvania wUderness he had a Ubrary of six hundred books in Latin, French, German, EngUsh, Greek, Dutch, and ItaUan. Whüe many of these were reUgious, they included Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, Hume's History ofEngland, and Blackstone's Commentaries.46 Although none of the other Russian converts of this era, with the possible exception of Sophie Swetchine, produced works equal to GalUtzin's, aU sought to understand and defend their new faith in the rational and critical spirit of the Enlightenment. "I can assert that the Christian reUgion is not just the reUgion of love but also of science," Sophie Swetchine wrote to a friend in 1815.47 Ekaterina Rostopchina's 4,Ekaterina Rostopchina, Sommaire des vérités chrétiennes (Paris, 1829), p. 90. 42Varvara Golovina, Memoirs of the Countess Golovine, trans. G. N. Fox-Davies (Lon- don, 1910), pp. 35-36. "Quoted in Sargent, op. cit. , pp. 77-78. "Murphy, op. cit. , p. 1 5. ""A Defence of Catholic Principles," Murphy, op. cit. , pp. 1 3- 1 1 1 ,passim. ÄFor a partial description, see Sargent, op. cit. , pp. 263-265. 47Letter to Roksandra Sturdza Edling, July, 1815. Quoted in Rouët de Journel, op. cit., p. 131. BYDANIELL.SCHLAFLYJR.725 Sommaire des vérités Chrétiennes® and her Méditation sur le princi- ple d'écouter l'Église49 attempted a rational exposition of CathoUc doctrines, emphasizing a refutation of Orthodox positions on such disputed points as the primacy of the pope.50 In one important respect, however, GaUitzin was closer to the spirit of the EnUghtenment than many CathoUcs of his time, let alone the often rigid and intolerant Russian converts. Although he defended Catholic doctrine, praised the Church's historical record, and criticized Protestant teaching and practice, he did not hesitate at one point to condemn "the execrable massacre of the French Calvinists, under Charles LX."51 He went on to say, "Catholic or Protestant potentates who abused their power, to force the consciences of men, and by tortures to obUge them to embrace their own creed, were monsters and not Christians."52 It was precisely the toleration so prized by the EnUghtenment that Gallitzin found most attractive about America, "where they [Catholics] may enjoy rational liberty and independence," as he stated in The Bible: Truth and Charity. n He was a loyal American for more than the benefits the constitution offered CathoUcs, however. In a letter to the editor of the Lancaster Federal Gazette written September 20, 1808, he praises "a Constitution that pries into no man's conscience, but leaves it to everyone's choice to make the sign of the Cross or not to make it, to read the Bible in Latin or in English, to go to mass or to meeting. ... O happy Constitution! and happy those that live under her protection."54 When GaUitzin, to use his own words, "renounced aU the flattering prospects of this world"55 to spend his life as a Catholic priest in a wUderness mission, it was in one sense a complete break with his father's milieu of wealth, government service, and sophisticated discourse. But in a more important sense GaUitzin continued to exemplify the Enlightenment values of reason, tolerance, optimism, and inteUectuaI curiosity. In the last analysis he remained, as he habitually described himself later in life, "Demetrius A. Gallitzin, son of Prince Demetrius of GaUitzin,"56 and a true son of the Russian EnUghtenment. "See note 4 1 . 4'MS in the Bibliothèque Slave. '"Naturally, Gallitzin's primary concern was the often intolerant and unsophisticated Protestantism he and his fellow CathoUcs encountered on the frontier. "In "A Letter to a Protestant Friend," Murphy, op. cit. , p. 204. nIbid. "Murphy, op. cit. , p. 276. "Ibid., p.299"Quoted in Sargent, op. cit. , p. 225. *Ibid.